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OLinux.com.br: KDE Release 2.0 by Mathias Ettrich [Q&A w/Ettrich]

"Olinux: Rapidly, What are the better features KDE2 will bring to users that Windows doesn't have?

Mathias Ettrich: Users coming from Windows will gain much more sophisticated window management (snap to border, more mouse and keyboard shortcuts, different focus policies, shading), a nicer and more modern look and feel with lots of different window decoration and widget styles to choose from, a fancy desktop panel with applets for various tasks, a multi-session capable terminal window that is really usable, virtual desktops without the need of buying two screens and graphics cards, session management, network transparency, overall more configurability, a great mail client and many more neat applications. One of the most important features I almost forgot: a very stable, fast and secure underlying operating system, may it be Linux or one of the free BSD derivates."

"Olinux:Why was Qt chosen for the KDE team? Would you go from Qt to another graphic library like Gtk? What is the difference between Qt versions 2.0 and 1.0?

Mathias Ettrich: KDE is a true open source project that consists mainly of voluntary work. You can't compare this to commercial open source projects like Mozilla or the Eazel file manager. KDE gets written because its authors want to write it, while those commercial open source projects get written because somebody senses business and pays programmers to do the job.
... While you can easily make programmers work with inferior technologies and let them reinvent everything from scratch by giving them enough money, you cannot do that in a free project like KDE. Free programmers work for fun. Better tools promise more fun. Programming with Qt is extreme fun, as it lets you concentrate on what you really wanted to do: writing an application, not fighting a toolkit or a programming language. If Netscape used Qt, they would have release a modern cross-platform browser two years ago.
... Compare Mozilla with Konqueror, compare the sizes of the development teams, the time they used and the results. Then judge for yourself."